When some poor travel planning and a surprise twist of fate left us with a chance to completely change our travel plans we were left with a dilemma – should we stay in Indonesia as planned or head off somewhere completely new? Here’s what we decided.

07 August, 2013 /

I knew full-well when we set off on this trip that I’d have to confront many issues that morally outrage me such as the global sex trade, homelessness and animal cruelty. These issues are prevalent enough in so called ‘developed’ countries like the UK but we found that as soon as we hit Indonesia they became even more visible; in particular we were struck by the plight of Indonesian street animals.

28 July, 2013 /

We all want to make our hard-earned travel savings last as long as we can on the road, but when Andrew and I got to Indonesia we became obsessed with spending as little as possible, with disastrous results – here’s how becoming travel budget fanatics almost ruined our trip.

25 July, 2013 /

One of the things we had been looking forward to about Indonesia was the prospect of slowing down after two hectic months of zipping around New Zealand and Australia. Back in London I’d organised 60-day visas so that we’d be able to stop and catch our breath once we arrived in Indonesia. I had pictured us staying in luxurious, cheap hotels where we could go swimming; I imagined days filled with relaxing and exploring combined with plenty of time to write and catch up with freelance work – it would be perfect.

09 July, 2013 /
Despite the nightmare of our first few days in Java, we were determined to do one more thing before we fled to Bali – hike up to watch the sunrise over mighty Mount Bromo.We were moving fast through Java, an island half the size as the UK but infinitely more challenging to get around. Our second sweltering train journey took us six hours from Yogyakarta to Surabaya, a city almost as huge, ugly and difficult to negotiate as Jakarta. Visits to Mount Bromo are popular with tourists since it’s the most well-known active volcano on the island, but in typical Java-fashion, it still took us hours to find and book a tour.
22 June, 2013 /

I couldn’t stop them any longer – flopping down on the hotel bed I buried my miserable face in the pillow and let the tears flow. I’d been holding them back for days, trying to ignore the disquieting feeling in my gut that I’d made a terrible mistake coming to this country. We’d been in Indonesia less than a week and I was already longing to leave – what had gone so horribly wrong?

18 June, 2013 /
I can hardly believe that it’s been almost a year since we set off on our travel adventure. The memory of getting on that one-way flight to New Zealand last March with a new, uncertain life of indefinite travel ahead of us is still so vivid to me.  When we first set out I thought that we’d be able to explore the main sites of each country within a few weeks or a month, tick that country off our list of places to go and move on. I was completely wrong; instead we’ve left almost every single country we’ve visited wanting to come back and see more of it in the future.
16 June, 2013 /

Most days on the road are good, really good. A few are the rare kind that you remember for years;  days that were so amazing it almost hurts to remember them – like skydiving in New Zealand. Then, inevitably, there are the days that aren’t so good. Just as in normal life, sometimes we’re exhausted, sick, pissed off or just feeling inexplicably flat. Unfortunately, I was feeling a mixture of all those things the day we set off on our Great Ocean Road Trip.

09 May, 2013 /

New Zealand was the first stop on our trip and it proved the perfect country to start our new life of travel. Here’s the lowdown on the best places we visited, our overall impressions of the country and some tips for backpacking around New Zealand.

18 April, 2013 /